


Brown is the New Black

by KitsJay



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: AU, College, I work in academia can you tell, M/M, kinkmeme fill, so hey guess what I was the Christmas anon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 23:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17796683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsJay/pseuds/KitsJay
Summary: Monroe is a TA at Brown University with a fierce dedication to the Oxford comma. Nick is still a Grimm, but also his newest student. Monroe doesn't know whether to be more afraid of him or his dreadful grammar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at the Grimm kinkmeme.

Monroe stared at the massive pile of papers Dr. Renard had dumped onto his desk before disappearing to his office with orders not to be disturbed. He picked one up, barely making it through the first line before he was cringing. It was the inaugural round, or as Monroe privately referred to them, the “break their spirits until they learn” essays he had them all write the first week of class.

“What the hell are they teaching these days?” he muttered to himself, digging through his desk for a red pen. The department had sent out a friendly message two weeks ago about switching to “friendlier” colors, but Monroe was old school. Also, if undergraduates were going to make his life hell, the least he could do was use a little red ink. He wrote a particularly scathing line about theses and _why you needed to have them_ by the student’s introduction, which, while not quite text-speak, was close enough that he felt a headache forming just looking at it. The rest of the papers went quickly, some decent, most awful, and a few that he seriously considered stapling McDonald’s applications to the back of in lieu of his comparatively polite, “Maybe you should consider another major. Or college. Or life,” comment scrawled to the side.

His office was cramped, not much more than a store-room that someone had half-heartedly cleaned out and shoved three desks into on the fourth floor of the plain red building, and he shared it with two other graduate students in the department. Juliette was a pretty redhead who had a wicked streak to her that manifested in vinegar in the coffeemaker and My Little Pony stickers appearing randomly on Monroe’s desk. His other colleague was a sarcastic Medieval rhetoric grad named Wu, who had been here for eight years and had apparently given up the will to graduate sometime in the past two.

There was a tentative rap on the open door, and without looking, Monroe shouted, “She isn’t here!” to the undergrad stupid enough to try and hit on Juliette. There were at least five every semester, usually freshmen, who mooned after her like little lovesick puppies. It amused her to no end; she seemed to enjoy crushing their hopes under her heel.

The person cleared his throat and Monroe looked up, ready to light into him about office hours and how to read a syllabus when he paused. The student was standing awkwardly in the entrance, as if unsure of his welcome ( _Smart_ , Monroe thought), and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. He had gray eyes and dark hair. Monroe’s eyes widened suddenly as he caught a scent of something in the air buried underneath the Axe body spray left behind by the last student. He nearly tripped over himself launching himself from his chair and backing away.

“You’re—” He glanced around, but the halls outside were deserted. He lowered his voice and hissed, “You’re a Grimm.”

The guy’s eyes were wide in his face, his mouth hanging open. He recovered quickly and took a step forward, one hand in front of him. Monroe backed up against the wall. Oh God. He was going to die, and he hadn’t even written his thesis. He hadn’t even finished grading the papers. Dr. Renard was going to resurrect him and kill him again.

“I’m not—” The guy let out a breath that fluttered his hair. “Listen, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Right,” Monroe snorted. “That’s why you showed up at my office unannounced when no one’s around?”

“Actually,” the guy had the audacity to look _bashful_ , “I was hoping to get into your World Literature 1301 class.”

Monroe blinked. Grimms were sneaky, but he had to give the guy props for having a unique approach to his clearly murderous intent.

“You want to take World Lit?” he said slowly. The guy nodded. “With Dr. Renard and me.”

“Yeah, my adviser told me to come get you to fill out the force slip. Well, actually she said to get it from Dr. Renard, but he’s kind of, um, intimidating, so I decided to try you instead.” The guy started rummaging through his backpack and Monroe tensed again until he pulled out a yellow form and handed it over. “I’m Nick, by the way. Nick Burkhardt.”

Monroe shook his hand dazedly. This had gone past surreal and straight into a Dali painting. “Uh. Monroe.”

“Listen, I really don’t mean to bother you, it’s just I need that signed so I can get this taken care of and I’ve got a class halfway across campus in thirty minutes, so,” Nick said, trailing off and looking expectantly at Monroe, then the form, then back at Monroe.

Monroe pulled out a pen and signed the form, watching as Nick smiled, thanked him, and jogged off.

He collapsed into his chair.

And here he thought this semester was going to be boring.


	2. Chapter 2

Having a Grimm in his classroom was a new experience, one Monroe still wasn’t sure he enjoyed. He would turn to write something on the chalkboard and cringe, expecting a knife to come flying out of the middle seats in the auditorium and plant itself in his back, but Nick, from all appearances, appeared to be an average undergraduate. Better than, even, because he could actually write sentences that didn’t start with “omg” or end with “amirite?”. His essays weren’t great, probably would never be, but they were solid, and that was enough to almost send Monroe into raptures of joy. He made a mental note to fake his own death if they ever asked him to teach an introductory course again.

Nick mostly took notes, laughed with the other students at Monroe’s snarky comments on the textbook, and occasionally leaned over to whisper something to his friend, a fratboy named Hank Griffin. It was creepy, like seeing the boogeyman ordering a latte at the Blue Room. He reminded himself that the undergraduates were supposed to be afraid of him, not the other way around, and tried to ignore it. Another student, a pretty blonde, blue-eyed sorority girl named Kari Fågelis, who also happened to be a hraesvelgr, had panicked and dropped the class immediately when she first saw Nick. Monroe didn’t blame her; he just wished he had the same luxury.

He had grown used to it, though, when Nick started becoming a nuisance. He was sitting at his favorite coffee shop, reading the school newspaper and itching at the appalling grammar in an article about the rash of break-ins off campus when he heard someone shout, “Hey, Monroe!”. He looked up to find Nick pushing his way through, clutching his backpack strap with one hand and the other protectively cradling a paper coffee cup to his chest.

“Hey,” Nick said as he plopped himself into the seat across from him, completely uninvited. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about that essay that’s due next week.”

Monroe barely avoided rolling his eyes. “I have office hours,” Monroe said. “If you recall, I handed you a sheet of paper called a syl-la-bus that has them—“

Nick interrupted him. “I know, it’s just I’m kind of stuck and your office hours are at the same time as my economics class.”

“You can make an appointment,” Monroe pointed out.

Nick grinned. “Sure. How about today, say about now-ish?”

Realizing he wasn’t going to win, Monroe gave up, pushing his book to the side. “What’s the problem?”

“Well, I just don’t really get where I’m supposed to start,” Nick said sheepishly. “I was going to write about the differences between Aschenputtel and the Charles Perrault version, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Mmm,” Monroe hummed in agreement, choosing not to point out the very weird idea that a Grimm was writing a paper on a Grimm Brothers story. “What’s your argument?”

“What? It’s not an argument paper, is it?” Nick said with a frown, digging out the assignment sheet.

Monroe waved him off. “No, it’s a research paper, but you should know that every paper is an argument. Even if it’s just saying, ‘This is interesting, and here’s why.’ So if you can identify an argument, or a question, then you’ve got your thesis.”

“Oh,” Nick said, clearly thinking it over. “That makes sense.”

“Glad I could help,” Monroe said. He looked pointedly at his book. “If that’s all?”

“For now,” Nick said, standing. He grinned down at Monroe. “See you around, Monroe.”

“God save me from undergraduates,” Monroe muttered. The woman studying at the table next to him, who Monroe vaguely recognized as a fellow English grad, nodded sadly in agreement. They shared a moment of empathy before turning back to their respective projects.


	3. Chapter 3

“I need your help.”

“This is starting to become a really bad habit,” Monroe told him without looking up from his class plans. He heard Nick sit in the chair across from his desk and sigh. He reluctantly looked up, noticing that he really did look tired, bags under his eyes, his hands twitchy from too much caffeine and too little sleep, and his hair mussed as if he hadn’t looked in the mirror for a few days. “Midterms?”

Nick smiled ruefully. “You have no idea.”

“I actually kind of do,” Monroe said casually. He sighed. He did not want to get involved in this, but Nick looked more tired than even most of his students right now. He stood up and walked over to the coffeemaker, finding his hidden stash of Jamaican Blue Mountain grounds. As he watched it gurgle to life, spitting out the good coffee, he fished out two mugs that were relatively clean and poured two cups, handing one to a grateful Nick. He warned, “Don’t get used to it.”

“Thanks,” Nick said, taking a sip and letting out a little moan that sounded positively indecent. Monroe anxiously checked the hallways, but no one was there except for the librarian, a half-deaf, British woman who smoked like a chimney and never paid attention to anything that wasn’t measured in pages and bound in leather. “I seriously do need your help.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone else: study the review I sent you—“

“No,” Nick shook his head. He looked acutely uncomfortable. “It’s about the other thing.”

“The other thing?” Monroe said blankly. At Nick’s incredulous look, it dawned on him. “Oh. Oh! The—yeah. What about it?”

“Well, you’re a,” Nick made a vague gesture, and Monroe nodded impatiently for him to get on with it, “and I guess you heard about the break-ins off campus?”

“I did,” Monroe said. “In between the tense changes and completely incorrect use of the subjunctive mood, I think there was something about those. I think that sorry excuse for an author ended by suggesting a raven attracted to shiny things had done it. Truly investigative journalism at its finest.”

Nick shrugged. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“You wouldn’t,” Monroe gave him a scathing look. “Your tenses are nearly as bad. Here’s a hint: pick one and stick with it.”

“Whatever,” Nick said, as if he didn’t know that the offhand word sent rankles throughout Monroe’s shoulders. “I don’t think they’re normal break-ins.”

“Why’s that?” Monroe said, interested despite himself.

Shrugging off his backpack, Nick dug inside the mess of papers, Blue Books, scantrons and pencils to pull out the same campus newspaper, circled in red with notes written on the side. “From what I could find from this and some other articles, it looks like the apartments were locked, with no signs of forced entry. The latest one’s window was unlatched, but it was three stories up. The police have no idea what’s going on.”

“Situation normal,” Monroe commented.

Nick continued, “It looks like something supernatural at work.”

“So?” Monroe said, staring at him. He made a fluttering gesture with his hands. “Go Grimm something.”

“I need your help,” Nick said with big grey eyes. “I have two tests next week and a lab practical on Monday.”

“Not to mention your research paper,” Monroe added. He blinked as the rest of what Nick was implying caught up with him. “Wait, what do you want me to do? I’m not helping you cheat.”

“I don’t cheat!” Nick said hotly. “I just need someone to come with me to keep a look-out as I check things out.”

“You want me to _help you break in somewhere_?” Monroe stared at him. He shut the door and leaned his back against it. “Are you insane? Or high? You took something, didn’t you. I know people say that Ritalin helps you study, but you really shouldn’t—“

“I didn’t take anything,” Nick said patiently. “But I’m afraid that someone’s going to get hurt. So far whoever’s doing this did it while the owners were away, but what if someone catches them in the act? What if the person panics? I just don’t want anyone to get in trouble. What if it’s some creature who doesn’t know any better? I’m sure you did stupid things as a kid.”

Monroe stared at him a moment longer before cursing and grabbing his jacket and coffee mug.

“Why can’t you be this persuasive in your essays?” he muttered as they left.

The apartment building was a plain, bordering on ugly, structure with dull brick walls and iron railings painted brown. The paint had chipped here and there, leaving gouges in the uniform paint job. They were mostly smaller apartments, ideal for students who only needed a microwave for their Ramen and a place to plug in their Macs while they typed out last-minute essays. The rent was about as cheap as it got in this part of town, so close to the college. The street was quiet, even the worst of slackers buckling down to pass their midterms, and only a few cars passed them by.

“This is it,” Monroe said, turning off the engine of his pitiful car and staring up at it. He glanced over at Nick, who had fallen asleep sometime during the drive and was drooling onto his shoulder, head leaned against the glass. He tentatively reached out a hand, shaking him awake. “We’re here.”

“What?” Nick said sleepily, rubbing at his eyes. “Oh. Cool.”

“Yes,” Monroe rolled his eyes. “I’m assisting a student in an illegal search in the dead of night. I am now officially an accomplice. Very ‘cool’.”

“I can hear the air quotes when you say that,” Nick said casually, digging out something from his omnipresent backpack. Monroe watched with mild curiosity and had to cut off an indignant squawk when he pulled out a can of Red Bull and cracked it open.

“No,” he said, grabbing it firmly out of Nick’s hands. “Do you know how bad these are for you?”

Nick looked longingly at the can of death. “But I need something to help wake me up. It was that or caffeine pills.”

“Seriously?” Monroe rolled down the crank window and poured the drink out onto the pavement. “You’re not drinking this monstrosity in my car.”

“Fine,” Nick said, yawning. He leaned over Monroe’s lap to crane his head out the window, and Monroe had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. Nick remained oblivious. “That’s the one. I met some friends of the girl who lives there. They said that she usually goes over to her boyfriend’s to study, so we’ll have to wait until she leaves.”

“Wait, you just happened to meet some friends of hers?” Monroe said, leaning as far back into the seat as he could. He breathed out a sigh of relief when Nick returned to his own seat.

“No,” Nick said strangely. “I found them through the directory and then ‘bumped into them’ at the dining hall.”

“What’s your major again?”

“Criminal justice.”

“Oh, good,” Monroe said sarcastically. “So you know how very, very illegal this all is.”

“We haven’t really covered illegal searches yet,” Nick quipped with a grin. He pulled out his notebook and a pen and started working on something. Monroe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, wishing he had thought to bring a book.

“What are you working on?” he finally said, glancing over at Nick, who was glaring at the paper in concentration.

“That research assignment,” Nick said absently.

“No, you’re not, because I swear I saw the first person in that last sentence you wrote and so help me, if you turn that into me, I will burn it.” Monroe yanked the notebook and pen from his hands and began scanning the page, writing notes in the margins and crossing out every instance of the first person. “Also, this had better be typed and double-spaced when I get it.”

“It will be,” Nick protested. “I just write it out first.”

He sulked as Monroe muttered things to himself as he edited the paper. He tapped one paragraph. “This is actually good,” he admitted grudgingly. “Elaborate.”

Nick leaned over to see what he was looking at and paused. “Oh. I just was thinking about what you told me about having an argument. In the Aschenputtel story, the white bird comes to help her versus a fairy godmother.”

“So why the difference?” Monroe asked.

Shrugging, Nick fiddled with the trailing strap of his backpack. “I don’t know. It makes her more pro-active, for one, instead of just waiting around for a magical figure. Also, it makes more sense to me, that she actually had to do something rather than just have some random person give her stuff.”

“Good,” Monroe said, handing it back. “Keep thinking on that and see if you can’t elaborate.”

They sat in silence, only the scratching of Nick’s pen or the rustle of paper as he flipped the notebook to fill another page with scrawling notes punctuated by a series of question marks. In the distance, there was a raucous laugh, probably some relieved undergraduates blowing off steam from their most recent midterm and coming home from the bar, and the far-away tinny sounds of a radio playing too loudly in an apartment.

“Why are we doing this again?” Monroe asked.

“To help people,” Nick said calmly.

Monroe shot him a sideways look, then turned away disgusted. “You actually believe that.”

“Yes,” Nick said, still placid as ever.

“How’d you get into all this anyway?” Monroe couldn’t contain his curiosity. “You seem new.”

“Relatively. My aunt passed away a year after I graduated high school. I put off going to college and worked some odd jobs, all that, to pay off some of the debt she had gathered. It wasn’t much, but.” He shrugged. Dying was expensive, especially when the debt rested on a kid who just graduated high school. He continued, “I worked most of it off and started taking some community college, then applied here.”

“And the Grimm thing hasn’t interfered?”

“It was hard, at first,” Nick said. “Aunt Marie never told me about any of it until she died. I basically taught myself everything from reading her journals. I got kind of lucky. For a while there, I was getting into trouble, a lot. A cop pulled me aside and told me to do something with my life before I ended up getting myself killed. It was good advice, and… here I am, I guess.”

There wasn’t a lot to say to that, Monroe thought. It sounded like he had done pretty well, considering, and he was a lot luckier than he thought that he hadn’t been killed his first year. Grimms who came into their powers that young usually didn’t make it, not without someone watching out for them. He leaned his elbow on the car door and glanced back up to see the light in the apartment going off. “I think something’s happening.” They waited until a thin girl with brunette hair jogged down the stairs, fiddling with her keys and adjusting her skirt as she walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner.

“You wait here,” Nick ordered, his hand already on the door handle.

“Oh, no,” Monroe said, hating himself for volunteering even as he added, “I’m coming with you.”

Nick was shaking his head. “It’s not—”

“Forget it. I haven’t lost any students yet and I’d hate to set a precedent.”

Together, they walked as nonchalantly as they could into the complex, wandering through the serpentine, institutional grey walls, before they came to Apartment 331. “This is it,” Nick said. “Keep an eye out, will you?”

“For what?” Monroe hissed even as he turned his back to Nick and watched the hall for any signs of life. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. What are you doing back there, anyway?”

He turned to look over his shoulder to see Nick fiddling with something that looked suspiciously like a lock picking set. The lock made a shnik sound and Nick used his sleeve to open the door. Monroe arched eye eyebrows at him. Nick shrugged and shoved the lock picking set back into his jacket pocket. “Misspent youth, remember?”

The lights were out, but the place was still illuminated dully by the orange glow of streetlamps outside bathing the interior in a wash of sickly light. Monroe followed Nick in, whispering, “What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know yet,” Nick whispered back. “Just keep an eye out.”

The apartment was neatly kept, at least for a college student. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, but the tiny pantry was neat and organized, cans of soup stacked on one side and boxed dinners to the other. There was a small collection of spices on a rack and a box of Diet Cokes on the floor. He heard Nick move into the bedroom.

“Should you be in there?” Monroe fretted. “If this turns out to be an elaborately planned panty-raid, so help me—”

“Look at this,” Nick interrupted him.

Monroe crossed over to where he was standing, peering into the closet with a strange expression on his face. He looked inside. There were clothes hanging up, separated into dressy outfits, t-shirts, and jeans and skirts from left to right. An empty suitcase leaned against the corner.

“So?” he prompted after a minute.

Nick leaned down and picked up a pair of tennis shoes by the laces. “She only has two pairs of shoes. The pair she was wearing when she left and these.”

“I repeat: so?”

“So,” Nick said in an exasperated tone, “Look at her suitcase. That’s Louis Vitton. And her clothes,” he snagged one and showed it to Monroe. “These are all designer clothes. Now what woman has designer clothes and luggage, but only two pairs of shoes?”

Monroe opened his mouth to answer before realizing that he didn’t know. He snapped it shut.

“Fine, can we go now?”

“Just a second,” Nick said, wandering over to the dresser. There was a wooden box on top and Nick opened it, revealing a small cache filled with a few twenties in cash wadded up, some loose change, and a few dozen necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Nick fished one out and held it out to Monroe for inspection. “Does that look like real silver to you?”

“Like I would know?” Monroe said dryly.

Nick flipped over the small cross necklace to check the maker and whistled. “This is expensive. Definitely real.”

“Great, can we go now?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, his voice sounding preoccupied. Monroe led the way, glancing around to make certain nothing was out of place, and paused to let Nick close the door gently behind him. They walked to the car together and Monroe felt a wave of gratefulness as they pulled away from the curb and headed back to campus. The tension that had been resting in his shoulders all night melted away with relief; they hadn’t been caught, Nick had done… whatever he had done, and Monroe was blissfully uninvolved once more. He pulled up to the corner where he had picked Nick up.

“Out you go,” Monroe said, shooing him out of the car.

Nick grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, jumping out lightly onto the curb. He leaned down and tapped the car door. “See you tomorrow, Monroe.”

“What?” Monroe said. “No! There will be no tomorrow! My foray into the life of crime lasted for tonight only! I will see you Friday, in class, and that is it.”

Nick just grinned and walked away, waving nonchalantly over his shoulder.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick plopped himself down in front of Monroe, who stared at him in disbelief.

“So I looked into it and the other victims of the break-ins were all girls. Two of them were known for wearing designer clothes as well.”

“How did you even find me?” Monroe asked, darting looks around the small café. “I deliberately changed my routine so that undergrads wouldn’t be able to find me.”

Nick ignored him, pulling out another notebook, this one with dates and notes. “Apparently all of them had shoes stolen as well—whoever it was must have had good taste, because they were all high-end.”

“This isn’t even a popular place!” Monroe said.

“I’m thinking that our crook must be a woman. It could be a guy, selling them on eBay or whatever, but they would have had to be fashion savvy enough to recognize last season’s from this one.”

“It’s not even on Google maps!”

“Will you let it go? Your car isn’t exactly inconspicuous,” Nick said.

“Fine. Also, there is no ‘our’ crook. There is no ‘we’. There is the TA, that’s me, and the student, that’s you. We are not a team. We are not the dynamic duo. We are not Batman and Robin. Also, how are you finding this stuff out? Are you stalking people?”

“No, I’m investigating,” Nick said patiently.

“By stalking them,” Monroe said. “Fine. There’s one thing I would add that you’re not thinking through—why would someone be stealing shoes?”

“Fashion conscious? Or to sell, except they didn’t take the jewelry,” Nick mulled it over. Monroe waited him out as he talked out loud. “That mean that whoever it is doesn’t have the money to either buy them herself or needs to sell them for money. Tuition isn’t cheap, so they’d probably be a scholarship student.”

“Who’s trying to keep in the in-crowd,” Monroe added.

He peered at Nick. The bruises under his eyes looked deeper, and he looked paler than he should. Monroe huffed out an annoyed sigh, standing and pointing a finger at the ground for Nick to stay put. He wandered up to the counter and ordered a large coffee, black with two sugars, and upon looking at Nick’s thin frame, added on a croissant as an afterthought. The barista handed it to him in a little bag and he thanked her, depositing the bag and cup on the table. “Eat.”

Nick blinked owlishly at him.

“Eat,” Monroe insisted. “I can’t believe this. Have you even been sleeping? When’s the last time you ate?”

“I’m fine,” Nick said insistently. “I need to solve this before people get hurt.”

Monroe rolled his eyes and shoved the baggie closer. “You need to eat before you run yourself into the ground. Then we’ll go digging up scholarship records.”

“We?” Nick said through a mouthful of croissant.

“Shut up and don’t talk with your mouth full,” Monroe said, wondering how he had somehow been charged with taking care of a Grimm. He sighed. Why had he ever signed that damn form?

“So the financial records are confidential,” Monroe said, scrolling through his computer. “But the other grad student Wu hacked into them.”

Nick looked worried. “Did he ask why?”

“Wu is a man of few words, most of them sarcastic,” Monroe explained. He pointed to the screen. “There’s a ton of them here. Any way we can narrow it down?”

“Well, we’re working on the assumption they’re female,” Nick said, thinking. “I’d say we’re looking at someone who wants to stay popular.”

“So maybe a sorority?”

“That’d work,” Nick said nodding. Monroe narrowed the search. The list was still depressingly long.

“Anything else?”

“It’d have to be a substantial scholarship. And whoever it is, they’ve been pretty clever about not being caught, so narrow it to academic scholarships.”

The list shortened some more, until it was more manageable.

“Looks like there’s still quite a few.”

“Hang on,” Nick pushed Monroe aside and leaned over the keyboard. Monroe caught a whiff of a cologne, some subtle scent with shades of cedar and sandalwood. He caught himself sniffing Nick before catching himself, feeling like a fool. Didn’t the guy have any sense of personal space? Nick interrupted his annoyance with a satisfied, “Bingo.”

“What?” He glanced at the screen. There were only six names on it now. “How’d you do that?”

“We were just talking about geographical profiles in one of my classes. I stayed up all night making one using the break-ins so far. I just had to add in sorority houses to the variables, and then cross-referenced with addresses listed in the student directory.”

“And that worked?”

“Apparently,” Nick said, clicking print. The ancient machine in the corner burst into life, coughing out a piece of paper with the six names and addresses on it. Nick snatched it up, scanning the contents. “One of these is our suspect. We just need to figure out which one.”

Monroe was staring at the screen, a strange expression on his face. “I may be able to help with that."


	5. Chapter 5

Kari Fågelis lived in a sorority house a few blocks away and drove a well-kept, if older, BMW. She was walking toward it when Nick stepped out, holding a map of the campus in one hand, and a sheepish expression on his face. Monroe rolled his eyes from where he was standing.

“Hi, um, can you help me?”

Kari’s eyes widened and she backed up, pulling out her keys and fumbling until she pulled out a tiny bottle of pepper spray. “Stay away from me,” she said, still backing away slowly. Her eyes darted around, but the street was deserted except for the three of them. “I know what you are.”

Nick dropped the act and put his hands up. “I know what you are, too, Kari, and I’m not here to hurt you.”

She gave an indelicate snort. “Yeah, right.” Her eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, how do you know my name?”

“That would be me,” Monroe stepped out, wondering when he had become ambassador between the creature world and Grimms. Oh, that’s right, when one hapless undergrad named Nick Burkhardt had somehow roped him into it. “Listen, Kari, we’re not here to hurt you. Seriously, he’s a good guy.”

She looked uncertain, but she lowered the pepper spray and looked at them defiantly. “What’s this about?”

“Kari, I know you’re the one behind the break-ins,” Nick said gently. Her blue eyes were wide and panicked. Nick kept his voice unthreatening, “We’re not going to report you. We know you just wanted to fit in. But you’ve got to stop this. You or someone else could get hurt.”

She put a hand to her mouth, then suddenly burst into messy tears. Her straightened, bleached-blond hair swayed as she cried. “I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry! I just—the other girls always made fun of me because I didn’t have the same pretty clothes and I just thought that it would be so easy and—“

The rest of her confession was lost in high-pitched wails. She leaned her head against Monroe’s chest, leaving snot and tears all over his shirt as he awkwardly patted her on the back. “There, there,” he said, shooting a desperate look at Nick over her shoulder. Nick put his hands out and mouthed, ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Anything!’ Monroe mouthed back.

Nick put a hand on Kari’s shoulder and pulled her back, fishing out a napkin from his pocket and handing it to her. She blew her nose in it noisily. Her mascara was running down her cheeks, giving her raccoon eyes that Nick and Monroe politely chose not to mention.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ll never do it again.”

“Okay, I believe you,” Nick said, soothing her.

She looked at him with big blue eyes still watery. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“I don’t do that,” Nick said firmly. He smiled at her. “Especially not for stealing some shoes to fit in.”

Kari stared at him for a minute, then squealed and jumped at him, hugging him. “Thank you thank you thank you so much! You’re totally not like my parents said!”

“Uh, sure. Just, um, don’t do it again,” Nick floundered. Kari nodded solemnly before running inside to the house.

Monroe stared at him before turning and shaking his head in disgust.

“You’re like the worst Grimm _ever_ ,” he said as he walked away.


	6. Chapter 6

Nick poked his head into Monroe’s office, glancing around before shutting the door behind him. Monroe looked at him over his mug of coffee.

“Grades will be posted Monday,” he said.

Nick shrugged. “Okay. Just wondering what you thought of my paper.”

“It was good,” Monroe said with a grunt. “You actually took my advice for once and turned it into a decent paper. I liked your defense of Perrault’s version regarding the treatment of the stepmother and stepsisters as being a product of a Christian background and idealism.”

Nick’s eyes lit up. “Cool.”

“Again with that word,” Monroe rolled his eyes.

“It’s a good word.”

“So is ‘jejune’, but you don’t see anyone else using it.”

“You did,” Nick said. “In my last paper.”

“Exactly.” When Nick made no move to leave, Monroe asked, “Was there something else?”

Nick, to Monroe’s amazement, actually blushed, toying with the edge of his jacket.

“Uh, I was wondering if I could pay you back for the croissant the other day,” Nick said. He looked up. “Maybe with dinner?”

It took a few seconds for that to filter; Monroe was used to Juliette being hit on, not himself. He cleared his throat. “Uhh, I don’t think that would be entirely appropriate.”

“Why not? I’m not your student anymore.”

“You are until grades come out,” Monroe told him meaningfully.

Nick’s face was puzzled, then cleared with a bright grin.

“Oh. I’ll see you Monday then?”

Monroe couldn’t resist. “Sounds cool.”


End file.
